Hair cuts and Indian food smells

For a while, maybe a year and a half, I cut hair. I wasn't particularly good at it. I had no training. It wasn't like I was making a living at it. I just did it. I charged less than $10 a haircut.

During this time (years ago), I repeatedly went over to a friend's house to cut his hair. He believed I could cut his hair because I said I could. Never underestimate the power of projecting confidence! Also, I was cutting my boyfriend's hair at the time and said boyfriend wasn't wearing a baseball cap to work. So I guess I could at least follow a previous cut.

During this time period I probably wound up cutting hair for five or six guys.* Generally, I just did what I saw cutters do. You know, a lot of pulling the hair out to a distance on both sides of the head and eyeballing it to see if it was even.

So I went to my friend's house to cut his hair. I remember entering the house and smelling the rich combinations of cumin and coriander and cinnamon and my friend saying, "Doesn't that smell wonderful? Why don't you stay for dinner." His young bride had prepared an Indian meal for their (extended) (Indian) family.

At the time, I thought "Ugh. Weird smells!" and begged off.

I cut his hair while his wife watched everything I did. At the end, she said, "I think I can do that."

I said, "Sure you can."

My friend said to his wife, "No, you can't cut my hair. You don't know what you're doing."

I tried to assure them both it wasn't that hard but he'd hear none of it. She went off to watch Three's Company. Seriously.

I stopped cutting my friend's hair when, in the course of one evening, I nicked a mole that was just below his hairline with the scissors and told his brother that he wasn't fooling anyone by combing his hair from one ear over his bald head to the other ear.

Yeah, smooth. That's me. I hope they teach some customer relations skills at beautician school.

But back to the smelly Indian food... Today, I love Indian food and the smells that come with it. I can totally get fat on Indian food because Indian restaurants so often provide a buffet and it all looks and smells so good to me. Samosas, pakoras, dals, curries, nan, all of it. I can load up a whopping plate of Indian food, finish it off, and happily go back for more.

Which leads me to today's question: How can something smell repugnant to you at one point in your life and smell absolutely wonderful to you at another point in your life?


* Never women. In my experience, women care if their hair is cut right much more than men do.